A Puppy Blog

Chai




Not because I’m into dogs, being more of a crazy cat lady myself, but because my brother’s new puppy, Chai, appears to be so cute, and because some of my friends enjoy a good puppy pic!

with her family

EEK!

Now this was a bit weird.
I came home from a rather exhausting stretch of meetings with
the Theatre today, about the Young Company production of Peter
Pan, for which I'll be designing costumes, and as I walked into
the garage with an armful of stuff, I heard an odd sort of noise.
Odd enough that I stopped and listened.
At first I thought it maybe sounded a bit like the hissing you
might here if some airline was leaking a bit.
Then it sounded like maybe Darrell had left his shop radio on,
but that it was extremely distorted. Then it sounded closer. In
fact it sounded like it was coming from ME!
I looked down to see what I was carrying, and down by my foot,
there was...a squirrel. Sort of a tiny-squirrel like creature, in a
kind of splayed attitude. I sort of backed away, partly for a better
look.
And damned if he didn't kind of scuttle at me. Well, no maybe
he lunged. Certainly he hurried in my direction. I backed up
further, towards the forge and the door into the house. Squirrel
came too. Faster. And making weird noises!
I darted around him and out of the garage, turning around as I
went. He was coming after me....

At this point, heart pounding, I timmied out totally and trotted
around to the back of the house and up to the deck and in that
way. And kind of gasped my story out.

Kindly Darrell went down to investigate.

No sign of anything, but yes, there was the strange faint little
noise. And then more sound. He pulled the garage door back
from where it was folded back against the wall, and there, on a
cross-board and in the coils of an extension cord, were two
young squirrels!

Out came the heavy work gloves, and squirrels were re-located to
the woodpile. (Of course, their not so subtle shrieks and cussing
drew the attention of Bear, one of my cats, and as far as I know
he's still sitting sentry duty on the chopping stump!

And actually, after skulking around in the garage, I think there
may be other young'uns still hiding behind a pile of anvils and
blacksmithing gear!

I feel a bit silly now. But he put on a really good threatening
show!

Wisdom from the Dead Dog Cafe

"It is the wise man who knows the difference between a peach
and an opinion."

Jasper Friendly-Bear

First Camping of the Season

Well, it's come and gone.
And for all the not-inspirational weather, it was a relatively
pleasant weekend.

Every May long weekend, we head over to the season opening of
the Ameliasburgh Museum, near Belleville, and take part in a
rendez-vous.
This is demo camp of varying folk of the Black Powder &
Buckskinner persuasion. Depending on the annual mix of
attendees, there can be French & Indian War re-enactors,
mountain men, 1812, Butler's Rangers, with a goodly mix of tipis
and wall tents and suttlers and settlers.

After a number of years of playing on the periphery, (too many
interests, not enough weekends,) we finally settled on the
Louisbourg time period, 1750's, which is also pretty much the
same time period as Last of the Mohicans.
Mostly, it was in an effort to help us coordinate our gear. Coming
from a Canadian Pioneer Museum background, we have a lot of
1850's stuff, and interests in earlier time periods, and indeed, in
all things old, has led us to have a large collection of bits and
pieces. Way more than we ever take. Plus, we fall into that trap
of getting a great deal on something 'old' to take to rendez-vous,
and then hesitate, and say, gee it's old, what if it gets broken, so
it stays on the shelf!

But it's nice, when one actually does plan a lighter load, to have
some specific things to choose from. [We no longer ever bother
taking kerosene lamps.Works for later, but not for 1750.]

Of course, then this necessitates being able to sort and store
your belongings by time period! Funny how quickly you can fill
and overfill a drive shed!

Anyway, the weather was cooler than some other years, and
wet. Though we've seen colder and wetter, so we can't complain.
Of course, it does remind us that we have a few repairs to make
to the wall tent, and that all our canvas could probably use re-
waterproofing....

We'd taken our Shaker stove in case it got really nasty, but
ended up using the firepit for all our cooking anyway.
I made a surprisingly tasty venison stew one night. (Surprising,
not because I can't cook, but because I don't recall actually doing
much to it.) My brother-in-law and I had kind of frittered away the
afternoon adjusting tarps and canvas for maximum rain and wind
protection, and I lost track of time. When it suddenly occurred to
me to check, I was about an hour and a half away from the
potluck! So much for slow cooking! However, the venison turned
out to be quite tender, so that helped.
As I recall, I chopped some onions and browned them and the
venison a bit. I'd brought the rest of my first harvest of wild leeks,
and some of those went in. I was fairly certain I'd back some
bouillon packets, but I guess not, so I had one veg broth cube I
added, and some cooking beer. And pepper.
But an hour after I started, I took a taste and decided we should
either jump the queue at the potluck, or announce that it was
puppy dog stew. Because it was awfully good, and I was
determined to get a taste.
As it turned out, there were a number of very good hot dishes,
and we did indeed get some of mine without resorting to fisticuffs.
But there weren't leftovers. Or even seconds.

Oh well, I have more of that same batch of venison. And must go
over and dig more leeks.

vandy

Stray Cats, part deux

(a testing of the blob via email!)

So, our abandoned cat turns out to be a lost cat after all! Well, that's
helpful towards my opinion of humankind, if not towards my estimation of
intelligence in cats!

We got a call because of the notice in the Post Office. Apparently, a
couple of miles down our road to the east, and across the county road, is
where our poly-puss has come from. She's a neutered 4 year old named CoCo.
And ostensibly, a barn cat. Though she sure has all the savoir-faire of a
practiced house cat. She knows all the secrets!

So, we're going to have a trial week, and see just how much our own crew
hate her, at the suggestion of her owner. (She started out life as a house
cat elsewhere, and I guess her lady wouldn't object to her being able to
be a house cat again.)

The boyz aren't impressed, especially when she announces that ALL
bowls are HERS! But they seem able to ignore her.
Lily, on the other hand is pretty miserable.

Mind you, since this isn't a homeless cat, but a reasonably well-loved
barn cat, even if she does live in a barn, I'm not so filled with angst
about her future. If she can fit in, okay, we'd been getting used to the
idea we'd have to offer her a home. But if she can't, then I guess it's
back to the chorus line for her. Obviously her current people care enough
about her to have called and be concerned for her well-being...

But she is a charmer!

anti-v

TV Blob 2 - West Wing

Heck, if Karen can mention West Wing on her blog, so can I!

It does seem kind of numbing, realizing that was the last episode ever. I’ve followed lots of television shows from start to finish, some running longer, some running less time. Some were probably important in my life at the time, some less so.

I don’t know if the end of any ever seemed quite so gut-wrenching.

West Wing was a special entity. It was real life. But it was a fantasy. (Even more so after the election of George W.) It was intelligent and literate and informative. (I never knew as much about current political situations, and American politics – and actually, never knew less about American politics than I know now!) It has to have had some of the finest writing and acting that I can recall in any television series I’ve ever watched. (And I’ve always had a bit of a love affair with the television. It fascinates me and repels me. Intrigues me, inspires me, bores me.) I love books passionately, but I love theatre even more, and television is sometimes like a tiny captive theatre. Not always! But sometimes.

West Wing had passion and great beauty. Oh, it had silliness and humour and stupidity and anger. It made me go away and look things up. It rootled about in my memory and pulled up quotes and references I didn’t even know I had stored away. It made me far more aware of current events.

They lost their way a bit when Aaron Sorkin left the show, though he’d left them with a crisis to carry them along a bit, the abduction of Zoe Bartlett. However they seemed to find their stride again in season 6, and by season 7, although it was a very different show, it was a comparable one.

I think I’d have been perfectly happy if it had carried on to become whatever new show it was destined to be, during the tenure of President Santos. I think it would still have been very good TV.

But I don’t think I can ever be as innocent in politics again, having seen West Wing. Oh for the likes of President Bartlett! Yes, it was a fantasy, but what a fantasy!

How Not To Have A Stray Cat

A number of years ago, some friends had a stray cat show up at their place and start hanging around. Another friend sent us all a list of rules for How Not To Have A Stray Cat.

The only one I can recall, which may have been repeated in the list, was something about feeding them.

[Aha! Found it! http://www.xmission.com/~emailbox/strays.htm ]

And yes, my friends no longer have a stray cat. Instead, Elvis is the master of the house now. (Well, he was till the kitten came. Now they sometimes take turns. Some days she lets him be master again!)

Our current trio of tossers weren’t stray cats, but they were the offspring of a stray cat. Or perhaps I should say, a “dumped” cat. We don’t so much get stray cats here as we get abandoned cats. Sad truth.

There was John Thomas or Hamish, a gorgeous big orange fellow. Who announced his arrival by getting his head stuck in a tin can from the recycle box and cycloning around in the garage, never touching the ground, while trying to get his head out. It was an impressive entrance! He was an amazingly nice boy. He stayed here for a week or so, and about the time we were thinking we might just talk ourselves into keeping him, he moved on. I think we were always a bit sad about that.

There was a lovely little tabbyish cat, who made her entrance by excavating through a partially constructed wall, (we’d been planning a doorway), and joining us in bed, purring. I eventually found her a home with a co-worker in the city.

There was another cat another time, who eventually got trod on by a cow, and had to be put down.

There was a charming, very young, ocelotish kitten, who fortuitously got adopted by one of the other families in the neighbourhood. (Meaning NOT by us!) George, our next door farmer has taken in countless abandoned cats. And there was Miss Kitty, who arrived here in 1999, I assume abandoned because she’d gone into heat, which turned her from someone’s amusing little pet into a responsibility. Sadly, not yet wise to the ways of the world, she got herself in the “family way”, and eventually gave birth to our crowd.

We’d joked with our neighbour that whoever’s yard she had the kittens in, would take them. However, David’s stepdaughter was extremely allergic to cats. So, when Miss Kitty had her kittens under one of his shrubs, we generously hunted them down and brought them back to our place.

We found Miss Kitty a home, and a home for one of the four kittens, (there’d been five, but one was too fragile to make it). We thought we found a home for the third, but they brought him back! Husband didn’t want to shut his dog up for the two weeks it might take to introduce a cat.

[We’re now just realizing how lucky we were that the nice lady brought the kitten back, five hours worth of driving the round trip, and didn’t just dispose of him down there in some way.]

And of course, none of these cats ever arrived at a time when we weren’t already being owned by several cats. In fact, I don’t know that my husband and I have ever been single cat owners, while we’ve been together. It’s always been cats. Plural.

So, bringing in a new cat is not an easy decision, and definitely not a peaceful task, once the decision has been made.

And now there’s another one. Been here a week now. No-one seems to know anything about her. (I’m thinking “her”, but ever since I made a mistake about the sex of one of the kittens, I’m a bit less sure.) And she’s actually kind of distinctive; she’s a polydactyl cat. She has thumbs! Her front feet are like mittens. But none of the local vets have a mitten cat as a patient. No-one’s responded to any of the posters or notices. She’s a (mostly) well-behaved, extremely friendly, gentle cat. And pretty.

The Poly-puss

[That’s the odd thing about all the abandoned cats: they’ve all been the most desirable of cats. Attractive, friendly, clean, good-natured. But, I guess, just not cute kittens anymore.]


Now, we already have three cats. That’s a lot of cats. One of the things that’s made it work out alright is that they’re all siblings. So they’re the same age, and more or less the same level of energy. Bear likes Charv. Charv likes Bear. Charv likes Lily, and Lily likes Charv. Lily hates Bear some of the time, because he picks on her. But he does it in a good-natured way. She’s just his little sister, and that’s what she’s there for! But they’re the three most good-natured and endearing cats that I’ve ever lived with in my entire life of living with cats!
And I really don’t want to upset the status quo.

Not to mention that another cat means another vet bill. More cat food. More cat litter. More cats to worry about. More cats to share the bed with. (Oh no!)

But then, when she wasn’t out in the workshop last evening when I went to bed, I worried. And was glad when she was back again this morning.

Sigh. We’re such suckers!
Charv and Bear



Lily

The TV Blob

Because I’ve been promising to do it. (And someone mistyped blog as blob on a list I get, and I so liked the term I’ve started to use it from time to time. Sometimes they just feel more like “blobs”.)

Yes, I’ve been meaning to write a rant about tv. Not really sure why. It’s not like my life so revolves around TV. Though, admittedly, in winter when we turn back our thermostat because we have ineffective and expensive electric heat, it does seem that the only room suitable to hanging about in is the living room, and the warmest spot is huddled under the down quilt on the couch. And since we both desperately need new glasses, reading books is starting to become less of a long-term option.
Hence the TV.

And it’s NOT like we don’t have enough videotapes and dvd’s to sink the Titanic, because we do. So, in a normal evaluation, I’d say we’re far less hostage to what’s on offer.

But because I seem to feel so passionate on the subject, I had to analyze my reasons.
-yes, I’m older and slower and live in the country, so don’t have as many ‘going out to do’ things. At least not so many I’m actually prepared to drive to get to.
-and, okay, after spending fifteen years doing a long commute that left me pretty much useless in the evenings, I may have just developed habits.

But I think that some of the reasons I’m intensely concerned and frustrated about television also have to do with things like: increase of choice, but decrease of choice.

-yes, there are so many more channels out there now, but in reality there’s so little choice. We ended up having to get satellite because our ‘natural’ signals, which had started out fairly weak and limited, eventually dwindled to nothing one summer. We spent that summer watching videos, if we watched at all, but eventually decided to get a small satellite package. [Note: we’re also outside the real signal range for CBC radio, in the gap between different towers, so we have to pull radio in via the satellite, too.] But really, the longer and closer you look at what’s going on in the broadcasting world, and I have more awareness of it, having worked in the world of advertising, you see that for all the channels that may exist out there, there’s really only a couple of signals being passed around.
This is something that has infected all the media. It used to just be a bit of an annoying laugh at work, who’d bought up whom this week, and what address databases would have to be tweaked.
But now I’m really noticing just how little diversity there is in the media world.

And really, it’s pretty sad. It’s not like there’s variety. It’s not like there’s a range of viewpoints. Pretty much anywhere you turn, it’s the same thing.
Now there are cases where consistency is a good thing. It is (or was, as I’m currently discovering) a nice thing to know that a Tim Horton’s one place, was the same as a Tim Horton’s someplace else. Or that on a long trip you could stop at a Wendy’s or a McDonalds along the way, and pretty much know what you were going to get, when you didn’t have the time or inclination for experimentation.
But I don’t stop at Tim’s and the Golden Arches for every meal! Heavens, no!

And I really hate getting my media fixes in repetitive doses, either.

I also think that there was a point in the life of television viewing, and it may not have been that long ago, though perhaps it’s just my memory failing, that you could turn on the boob tube, and whatever was on offer might be something you’d watch. Or not. But somehow I recall it as more possible. Yes, it’s always seemed that there’s a higher percentage of programming geared for “not me”, aimed at the lowest common denominator. But these days it seems that the lowest common denominator must have dropped drastically, because I’m sure it’s not that my IQ has gone up. Can’t have. I’m sure we had lead pipes in my youth, and lead paints and radon gas and asbestos insulation, and we played in building construction sites and sewer pipe excavations, and lumberyards at night…. It didn’t kill me, but there’s surely no way it’s improved me!
So, why does it now seem that there’s programming on TV that not only do I not want to watch, I have to hastily and actively flip away from!
And it’s always been the case that shows which seemed to be good, and even had a following, get cancelled. So I guess there’s always been an “inexplicable” factor. Look at Star Trek! T least one can make the case for Star Trek, that it was an unknown quantity to the people running the game. They didn’t know what it was, they didn’t understand the genre, had never even met the genre before, so simply couldn’t understand or believe that it might develop a fan base. Now it’s an empire.

It’s just that now it seems that the dumb shows have got dumber, and the few other shows have become more vulnerable.

And even in the last couple of years, we’ve had that new mutant baby, the “reality TV” show. Brrrrr. Scary stuff. In a paraphrase of one of the Mythbusters guys, “I deny your reality!” Sorry, that reality is no reality I’ve ever met.
The very first time that Survivor was coming on, without having seen any advertising or heard much about it, I thought, oh neat. Get a handful of McGyver people together and see them do all nifty things in the wilderness. A really keen and enjoyable idea for a show I thought.
OOPS! Was I wrong! And since then, based solely on unavoidable commercials, since that’s as close as I let it get to me, it has even dwindled from the game show to soap opera and now, it seems, beyond Jerry Springer and into…what? Bedlam? (In the original definition of the word.)

I understand how this “new” form of TV may be cheaper to make. No actors to pay. No real directors. No visual values or effects. The biggest cost is prize monies or locations. But keep it as far from me as possible!

On the other hand, it’s been immensely satisfying when the odd show has turned out to be intelligent, well-written, well-acted, well-crafted, and despite that, becomes a hit! (e.g. House with Hugh Laurie. Holding its own at about number 8.)

But I think what I’m finding so perplexing (and therefore irritating) is that even when I find a show I’d like to follow, it becomes almost impossible to do so. Never mind that serial TV can really muck with scheduling your life, of the several shows we’ve even been trying to follow, (that haven’t been inexplicably dropped because they were too intelligent for your average bear, and there was something vaguely similar but dumber out there competing,) we’ve found that TV networks and stations don’t seem to follow that old concept of letting the public know when the program is on, and urging them to stick with it. No, now the process seems to be more like a game show – guess what night or what time it’s on! Or, if you figure that out, we’ll trick you by sticking in a random repeat. Or the latest trend, and extra special episode that just kind of recaps what’s going on. The kind of info we wouldn’t need to have recapped if the episodes just ran in regular order at a regular time and night!
And then, even given that you have to be a dedicated sleuth and follow ALL the clues, catch ALL the ads and promos, check the stations’ websites almost daily, if not more frequently, they still like to weed out the weaker, by posting conflicting info.
Perhaps all this additional thinking and puzzling is supposed to tire out our brains so we’ll be more complacent about what’s on offer?

And of course, this always harks me back to the ad agency days, when a lot of what went into planning a media campaign had to do with demographics, and target audiences. Ideally, a campaign is pitched at a specific market, which is often categorized by the time they’re watching and the type of programming. If no-one can ever figure out where the shows they want to watch will be on, how in heavens can the advertisers hope to find them? So, it’s perplexing indeed. In fact, I can’t really figure out who the winner is in this case.
The television programs fail to win the necessary ratings to continue, because their audience keeps losing them. The advertisers either can’t tell when the heck their ads are running, or don’t manage to find their proposed audience more than once every couple of times. The stations and networks themselves lose support.
I was regularly amused by the fact that on CTV’s website, a message forum had regular discussions about West Wing episodes over the last year, while everyone was actually watching it on NBC, because CTV had the rights to show, and couldn’t be bothered. No-one was actually watching CTV! And were regularly commenting that on the CTV forum.

Sigh.
All of a sudden I understand the amazingly fast turnaround on dvd releases!

Anti-V

(Canada’s NOT watching CTV!)